# The Aesthetic Specificity of Virtual Reality Outline **Opening (not a real abstract):** The Aesthetic Specificity of Virtual Reality Medium specificity is the view that the media associated with a given artform (both its material components and the processes by which they are exploited) entail specific possibilities for, and constraints on, representation and expression. As Carroll puts it, “The idea - which I shall call the medium-specificity thesis - that each artform, in virtue of its medium, has its own exclusive domain of development” (Carroll 1985; see also Carroll 2008). Medium specificity leads to aesthetic specificity: if a medium has unique features, it allows artists to elicit unique forms of aesthetic experience from their audience. For example, we might think that the aesthetic specificity of film lies in its presenting moving images to an audience, in the way that a photograph or series of slides does not. Similarly,